The Search for Shiny Things: Part 17

On the return journey home, having now given up on the trees since they were apparently by all evidence haunted, the teddy decided to follow the river some distance, where it bent and probably lead towards the white and drab house. Halfway to almost on the way home, the fields spread wide and open but right ahead was a little circle of poles, and a water buffalo hammering the final pole in place with its horn. As the teddy neared, it realized that the water buffalo was not, in fact, wearing a strange and silly hat but had a strange and silly bird – or maybe just a regular bird that made a strange and silly hat – sitting on its head. Every time the water buffalo tipped its head to hammer the pole down, the white bird lifted off in one slightly twitchy swoop before landing again. And once the teddy neared even more, it realized that the bird was in fact wearing a strange and silly hat, along with a sabre in its belt, and was reading a sheet of paper, which was why the flying looked so twitchy. The saber weighed it down so much it could barely take off at all.

“Ho there,” said the teddy bear, happy to find company on its long and not-so-triumphant return journey.

“Ho,” said the bird, then looked up from its paper. “Who goes ho?”

“Me,” said the teddy.

The water buffalo waved one ear in a friendly manner and hammered the pole down one final time. “There,” it said with a little sigh. “Can I go now?”

The bird looked around and tapped its foot a little. “Does this look like a tent to you?” it asked the teddy bear.

The teddy bear silently pondered if that was a trick question, because it never had quite learned to read bird faces terribly well. “It looks like the parts of a tent?” it suggested.

“That's what I thought,” said the bird and looked down at its companion. “I believe we need hands, for this next part. Hey you, whoever you are...”

“I am the teddy bear,” the teddy offered.

“Maybe you could lend us a hand...” the bird looked at the teddy paws with a mix of fascination and disappointment. “Never mind.”

“I can help, let me help,” the teddy said. Any epiphanies regarding help during the journey had, after all, taken place in the first half of the day and there was no need to jump to conclusions and conduct the second half of the day any different.

“Even if you had opposable thumbs,” the bird said, “We needs more hands. Unfortunately I have wings, and my friend here has only hooves.”

“Are you insulting my hooves?” the water buffalo demanded.

“Not at all,” said the bird, “I simply mean that to get our play tent up and going we will need to hold things. If only we had some way to find such creatures.”

Now that the teddy bear was standing right next to the water buffalo, that was a lot smaller in person than it had seemed from far away which made the teddy feel much better since the whole haunting business had made quite an impression, there was a horn hanging around the water buffalo's neck. The kind that made noise, not the stabby kind.

“Let me help,” the teddy offered again, and stepped closer and blew the horn as hard as its teddy stuffing could muster.